Tom McCarthy, James Salter win $150,000 Windham-Campbell Prizes

Tom McCarthy and James Salter are among the winners of the inaugural Donald Windham-Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prizes, announced Monday at Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Although the Windham-Campbell joins a crowded literary award field, it sets itself apart by its sheer size: Each prize is $150,000.

The global prizes are given to "English-language writers at all stages of their careers for outstanding achievement in the fields of fiction, non-fiction and drama," according to a Yale news release.

This year, they will be awarded to fiction writers McCarthy, Salter and Zoe Wicomb; Jonny Steinberg, Adina Hoffman and Jeremy Scahill in the nonfiction category; and Stephen Adly Guirgis, Tarell Alvin McCraney and Naomi Wallace for drama.

"Yale is a place that hopes to inspire and recognize greatness in every field. The Windham-Campbell Prizes allow us to fulfill that ambition in the field of world literature in ways we are only beginning to understand,” the university's president-elect, Peter Salovey, said in the release.

The prizes were established with a gift from the estate of Windham, a novelist and memoirist, and are administered by the Beinecke Library, which houses his papers.